2008/6/6
just like in a movie...
You know those plots – a world is built up, then suddenly it’s all confusing and bad, and then you discover what you are sure is the context, the explanation… only to discover that while the context is true, the bad-confusion continues, so it’s not so much causal as accidental, and the author is sitting there, snickering into hir fist?
Yeah, Author? I’d like to request less misleading like that, please. If you would. (0)
2008/3/30
curiouser and curiouser...
…and not necessarily in a good way. Spring is definitely springing; everything is happening all at once. Some of it is very, very good (more on that soon). Some is… not. My heart aches for its attendant body-and-mind, and – in a different way – for a loved one. My mind reels. My body is a bit shell-shocked by all the house-painting and weight lifting and weather changes, but this part is good, it reminds me I’m still alive and not suspended in some alternate universe, flailing a bit and effecting change whose ramifications won’t become clear for months to years hence. And so we walk on. (0)
Angry Squirrel rocks my socks.
Why do we hate Santa, he asks? Because he’s “fat and happy and perfectly content with his image??”
“That’s why I LIKE Santa!
“Because he’s a fat bastard
“who works one day a year
“is actually happy
“and eats all the cookies he wants!”
Rock on. Here’s to happy fattitude.
(I dislike and don’t celebrate the Day of Consumerism. Any gifts I give tend to be for New Year’s. But this is just too good.)
Cribbed from, like, everywhere. My web browsing habits, presented in alphabetical order for your delectation, some rather obvious, some perhaps not. Of course, this is the most recent browsing history, and is thus tainted by things like gift shopping and travel planning. Still more or less representative.
a: amazon
b: brown university
c: coastway (my credit union)
d: dartmouth dante project (which I in no way recommend! it’s broken in so. many. ways.)
e: the vaults of erowid
f: free dictionary dot com
g: an all-too-appropriate .gif!
h: paradiso del perverse (R-rated; hilarious)
i: ifMUD
j: jews against circumcision, a truly odd one
k: kat kunz’ personal site
l: my livejournal friends page
m: merriam-webster online
n: netflix
o: oxygen xml editor
p: nifty pic of transparent concrete (2, 3)
q: nada
r: rand mcnally
s: switchboard dot com
t: telecharge, for all your nyc ticketing needs
u: uncommon goods
v: w3c xhtml validator
w: unsurprisingly, words’ end
x: xchat site (it’s an irc client for mac os x)
y: yarnivore’s blog post on anatomically correct knitting
z: zipcode.com
And you?
you just want to put your head through the wall.
Good god, I have the thinnest skin of any human I know.
I have been interacting with some people about some work they wanted done. They thought I was their guy, I thought I was their guy, then we all separately started having our doubts, and in the end it didn’t pan out.
But it didn’t pan out in the worst way possible. In the way that makes me doubt that I’ll ever improve my diplomatic skills. In the way that makes me doubt whether I’m good enough at interpersonal politics to make it in academe. In the way that makes me angry because they contacted me and then failed to read the detailed explanation I was sending them at their own request. And, immediately after feeling angry, I feel stupid and inadequate and childish, and it’s all irrelevant anyway because although I won’t be doing this project (a good thing, if the past two weeks are any indication), I’m left with all this frustration at myself and others.
But mostly at myself.
It’s not all that bad, of course. If I am to believe my coworkers and immediate boss (and I have no reason to disbelieve them), my main job is going quite well. But, see, there nobody questions my competency, implicitly or explicitly. Nobody interrupts me every second sentence. Nobody ignores lengthy emails and asks me the questions answered in those emails. And, for the most part, I seem to be getting along with my team – and with my boss – just fine.
Of course, they all have known me for years. Surely that helps. But, damnit, I have a thin skin because I care about my coworkers and my work and the humanities and humanity. Diplomatic skills be damned; although I like to think that I am improving those. What you get is unadulterated me, throwing all my knowledge and energy and passion at most things I touch.
Now, just to figure out a way to harness this passion and not be hurt by responses to it. Simple.
YAWP.
“I didn’t see anything godly about that church. I didn’t see anything Christ-ly. All I saw was a bunch of bullies.”
Just finished watching The Magdalene Sisters and the documentary found on the same DVD, called “Sex in a Cold Climate.” Not an uplifting way to spend an evening, I’ll tell you what. It’s about the Magdalene asylums, institutions found up until 1996 all over Ireland, where women were sent for having children out of wedlock, for having been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted and so dishonored…
…or just for being pretty.
That way, they wouldn’t go astray.
A CBS News article from 2003 is chilling: the atrocities of those places were not discovered until 1998, and not reported until 1999. Up until five years ago, Ireland didn’t know that up to thirty thousand of its women were imprisoned and forced into slave labor in the Magdalene laundries. They were beaten into submission, scarred by being announced sinners who had lost heaven, forced to work “six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year” (documentary) for no pay. Many had lost their children to foster homes, adoptions, orphanages.
Some of the Magdalenes were sexually abused by the priests who came to take confession and give Sunday masses. Some women escaped, some went mad, some lived out their lives in the laundries from the time they were girls barely into puberty until the day they died. What kind of church, what kind of religion breeds such cruelty?
The same religion that institutionalized the abandonment of children born out of wedlock, babies dying by the thousands of neglect, lack of nutrition and syphilis - but at least they’d be baptized. At least, they’d go to heaven.
People genuinely believed this, and operated anonymous infant drop-offs until only a century ago.
Until less than a decade ago, women were imprisoned and enslaved by the thousands in Europe.
Don’t forget for a second. We are not out of the dark ages yet. Read this article, read it carefully, and then do me a favor and make an offering to the goddess of fertility.
Love and lovemaking are the reasons we are. A curse on those who profane that.
A December 2nd editorial in the Nashville Scene:
No doubt some might think it heresy for us to suggest how Jesus himself would come down on the medical marijuana issue, which state Sen. Steve Cohenpromises to bring to the legislature in the new year. But we’re going to do it anyway. Frankly, we think he’d offer a light to sick people who can’t get pain relief any other way.
And related, by Rev. Steven B. Thompson:
Cannabis was not only known, it was widely used in biblical times. Jesus would have been familiar with cannabis; it was used at the time in healing unctions and temple incense and was fed to both man and livestock. In fact, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Blessed Virgin Mary used it to ease the pains of childbirth. There is a wealth of documentation attesting to the safety and efficacy of this natural, healing herb stretching back over 5,000 years. It’s mentioned repeatedly in the Bible. Yet, nowhere does Jesus caution against its use. Alcohol yes, cannabis no.
Look out, Mr. President. There are thinking people in the Bible Belt who do their research and have their priorities straight. Booga booga.
There’s a meme going around on LiveJournal. Generally I do not participate, but I haven’t posted anything in a while, and this is too strangely fitting to pass up. The rules are:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
Removed from the flat space occupied by the formalism, we find ourselves in the sweating world of the aircrew.
How perfectly pomo-slipping-into-surreal. This is from a collection of essays called Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. The specific article from which the quotation comes is by John Law, “On Hidden Heterogeneities: Complexity, Formalism, and Aircraft Design.”
My laptop has been back for a week now, with a hard drive that works. I’ve been catching up on work (mostly done with that!), making further backups, digging myself out of bills and sundry paperwork, taking some badly-needed alone-time, rediscovering the depths of my soul and drinking more tea and coffee than usual. No wonder I haven’t posted much.
There are some personal projects that I would very much like to pursue. A possible freelance gig is still up in the air, and may not come through - but no matter, there is plenty to occupy myself in off-hours. I’ve got half a mind to print up this list and put it somewhere visible in the house. Here’s what I’d like to do over, say, the first half of the next year:
That’s quite enough, don’t you think?
